Life Between Death and Rebirth

Schmidt Number: S-2778

On-line since: 27th October, 2004

XVI

Life After Death

Strasbourg, May 13, 1913

We
encounter the full significance and the tasks of spiritual science
when we consider the period of life between death and a new birth.
There are many people, particularly in our materialistic age, who ask
why they should concern themselves with life between death and
rebirth or, if the idea of repeated earth lives is rejected, with an
existence after death, since they surely can wait and see what
happens after death when the time comes! This is said by people today
who have not quite lost the feeling for the spiritual world but who
are not yet equipped with sufficient soul-powers to acquire concepts
and feelings about the super-sensible. They add that if they perform
their duty here on earth, they shall experience in the appropriate
way what awaits them after death.

Now a genuine connection with life between death and rebirth brings
out clearly the fallacy of such a view and how important it is during
earthly existence to have formed an idea of the conditions of life
after death.

It is exceedingly difficult to speak about life after death in words
borrowed from everyday language since the language we know is adapted
to life between birth and death and refers to the objects of this
world. Therefore, we can usually only indicate what happens between
death and a new birth, which is so radically different in nature from
anything that can be experienced here. We must imagine that
everything we perceive here in the physical world to which we belong
cannot be our world after death because we lack the physical-sensory
organs. The intellect, which is bound to the brain, also ceases to
function after death. We can only tentatively endeavor to give a
picture of the life that is so completely different from our
existence here on earth. In a certain sense, everyday words can only
be used as analogies. Spiritual science, however, also teaches us to
relate words to spiritual reality and conveys by means of words an
understanding of the super-sensible world.

In the physical world, by the physical in man we mean that which is
enclosed within his skin, the rest is known as his surroundings, what
we experience depends on the functions of our sense organs but also
on the heart, lungs and so forth. All this vanishes in the course of
our journey between death and a new birth. During the earthly
existence our soul-spiritual being is embedded in our physical body,
and it lives on the activity of our organs. After death the part that
leaves the physical and etheric bodies grows ever larger, and a time
comes when what is otherwise contained within the boundary of the
skin expands so far as to fill the whole circumference of the orbit
of the Moon. The soul-spirit gradually grows right up to the Mercury
and Venus spheres, and farther to the Mars, Jupiter and Saturn
spheres, and even beyond into the universe. Later it contracts again
and unites itself as a tiny spirit-germ with the stream of heredity
that prepares its physical body through father and mother. This
description agrees with what has been written in
Theosophy.
The Spirit Land begins in the Mars sphere.

From the above it can be deduced that having gone through the gate of
death we all find ourselves within the same cosmic space. After death
we do in a sense interpenetrate one another, yet all the dead are not
together because togetherness after death depends upon something
quite other than what it depends upon on earth. In the spiritual
world we may be spatially united but we can only really be together
with another individual if we have a spiritual connection with him.

Let us take the extreme case of a person who, while on earth, has
utterly denied the spirit both in his thoughts and in his feelings.
There are many theoretical materialists who deny the spirit and who
nevertheless are in some way through their feelings connected with
the spiritual world. In reality there are hardly any people who
totally deny the spiritual world so that the fearful circumstances I
am about to describe never quite come into effect. Let us assume that
two such persons die who knew one another well on earth. After death
they will dwell within the same space but will be completely unaware
of one another because after death a feeling for the spirit
corresponds, let us say, to what here are our eyes. Without eyes, no
light; without a feeling for the spiritual, no perception of the
super-sensible world.

But an even more terrible fate than not being able to perceive the
spiritual world is in store for such people. Because souls who go
through the gate of death are of a spiritual nature, materialistic
souls cannot even perceive them. A yawning chasm opens up around such
souls. In fact, one may ask, “What does such a soul perceive
after death?” Not even himself as he is after death because he
lacks a clear consciousness of self. The following will show us what
remains for him.

Here on the earth we are situated at a point on the earth's
surface. Our organs are within us, whereas the starry heavens are
outside. The opposite is the case after death. Then man grows to a
cosmic dimension. When he has expanded up to the Moon sphere, the
spiritual that belongs to the Moon becomes an organ within him. It
becomes after death what the brain is for us on earth as physical
human beings. Each planetary body becomes an organ for us after death
inasmuch as we have expanded to its orbit. The Sun becomes a heart
for us. As here we bear the physical heart within our body, so there
we carry the spiritual part of the Sun within us. There is only one
difference. We are perfect physical human beings when, after the
embryonic evolution, all the organs have formed; They are
simultaneously present. After death we acquire these organs little by
little, one after another. We are then in this respect, considered
externally, quite similar to a plant-like being that also forms its
organs successively. We may, for example, compare the organ we
receive on Mars with the lungs and the larynx.

After death we grow into that of which the physical part has been
discarded, and the spiritual part of the cosmic organ is now inside
us. What is then our external world? What at present is our inner
world, what we have experienced by means of our organs that make us
into physical, earthly beings, and what we have done by means of
these organs.

Let us again take the extreme case of the person who has made no
connection whatsoever to the spiritual world. After death his outer
world consists of what he has been able to experience by means of his
physical organs. For such a radical atheist the world after death is
totally devoid of human souls and he is forced to look back on his
earthly life, on what was his world, on what he encompassed
with his deeds and experiences. That is his external world. It
consists of nothing apart from the memories that remain of his life
between birth and death, and that is not sufficient for what man
requires for his life between death and rebirth. In fact, when man
dwells outside his skin, his earthly existence looks quite different.

For example, on earth we are connected with a person towards whom we
feel antipathy, with whom we have quarreled and whom we have insulted
and caused pain. We are emotionally involved with him and we would
not behave in this way unless in a certain sense we found such
behavior gratifying. One is perhaps filled with remorse, and then
again one forgets about it.

After death we again meet this person but now we feel the opposite of
the satisfaction previously experienced. One senses that if one had
not acted in this way, one would have been a more perfect human
being; one's soul is wanting in this respect. This shortcoming
now remains in the soul until the deed can be adjusted. We do not
behold the deed as much as the failing in our soul, which must be
removed. We experience this as an inner force that leads us to find
an opportunity to wipe away the deed.

In the case of an anti-spiritual soul something else must be added,
because he feels he is severed from the soul he has dealt with
unjustly, and he must wait until he meets him again in order to
remove the stain. A feeling for the necessity of karma is the result
of looking back at the previous earth life. The tableau in the Akasha
Chronicle of the other soul stands before us in admonition. Then we
dwell merely among such pictures in the Akasha Chronicle.

Such extreme cases do not actually exist. The initiate who enters
into contact with the soul of a dead person can have the following
experience. He finds a soul with whom he is acquainted and who has
gone out of a male body through the portal of death leaving behind
him wife and children. This soul tells him, “I have left behind
my wife and children with whom I lived. Now I have only the images of
what we experienced together. My family is on the earth, but I cannot
see them. I feel separated from them. Perhaps one of them has already
died, but I also cannot find that one.” That is the voice of
despair of one who lived in surroundings in which the spirit has not
been cultivated. Therefore, such souls remain in the dark in relation
to the spiritual world and they cannot even be seen from the
spiritual world.

On the other hand, when an initiate finds souls who have left others
behind in the physical world, and who cultivated a spiritual life
such as spiritual science, then he finds the dead can perceive the
souls after death and communicate with them.

The so-called dead need the living, for otherwise they would only be
able to behold themselves on earth, that is, their own life that has
run its course. This explains the deed of love that we can perform
for the dead by reading spiritually to them, not aloud, but in
thoughts, by imagining the dead here with us in thought. In this way
we can read to a number of dead at one and the same time, with or
without a book, and thereby perform a considerable deed of love for
them. The thoughts must be related to a spiritual content, otherwise
they have no meaning for the dead. These thoughts create an external
world for the dead that he can perceive. To think chemical laws and
so forth has no sense because these laws are meaningless in the
spiritual world.

It is also impossible, as one might easily imagine, to learn any more
spiritual science after death because spiritual science after all
contains spiritual ideas. We can do a great service to souls who have
already heard something of spiritual science by reading cycles of
lectures to them. Although such souls are able to perceive a
spiritual world, they are nevertheless not able to form concepts and
ideas that one can only acquire here on earth.

Let us take an example. There are beings known as bodhisattvas, lofty
human beings who are far advanced and who incarnate repeatedly on the
earth until they have ascended to the rank of buddhahood. As long as
a bodhisattva dwells within a physical body, he lives as a man among
men, as a spiritual benefactor of mankind. Even here on earth he has
a special task, which is to teach not only the living but the dead
and even the beings of the higher hierarchies. This is due to the
fact that the content of earthly theosophy can only be acquired on
earth within a physical body. It can then be made use of in the
spiritual world but it must be attained within a physical body.

After their deaths, bodhisattvas can only in exceptional cases assist
the progress of other beings, beings in the spiritual world who have
already received the spark of the spirit here on earth. Theosophy
cannot arise through the spiritual worlds as such. It only arises on
earth and can then be taken upward by man into the spiritual world.

This can be understood if we consider that animals, for example, see
everything on the earth as men do, but cannot understand what they
are. Supersensible beings can only behold the super-sensible world but
cannot understand it. Concepts and ideas of the spiritual world can
only arise on earth, and they ray forth like a light into the
spiritual world. This enables one to understand rightly the meaning
of the earth. The earth is neither a mere transitional stage, nor a
vale of despair, but it exists so that on it a spiritual knowledge
can be developed which can then be carried upwards into the spiritual
worlds.